The gruelling pre-season period might not be every player’s cup of tea but it is Dan Tobin’s favourite time of the year.

Gloucester’s head of strength and conditioning has started to put the players through their paces after almost six weeks off following the European Challenge Cup final defeat against Stade Francais at Murrayfield with the aim of getting them in tip top condition for the start of the Aviva Premiership season in September.

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“I think players in general tend to be a little bit nervous and excited coming in for the start but I’m really looking forward to it,” said Tobin, a former Ireland 400m sprinter.

“It’s probably the part of the job I enjoy the most, planning a pre-season like this because it is the biggest project for our department.

“It’s our little project to get the team right and probably 80 or 90 per cent of the job we do as S&C coaches come in this two-month period so it’s important we get it right.

“There will be a few things that will test players and challenge players but getting players fit for the game is quite basic and quite straightforward – you can get them fit, strong, agile, make them robust to last an eight or nine month season that’s pretty attritional and that’s really the core part of it.

“We have our objective standards that we want people to hit and expect them to hit, and outside of that there’s a bit of fluff and a few surprises but the core part of the programme is very basic.”

Dan Tobin

Every player has been set targets and is being assessed over the first few days of pre-season, including a 1k test, which will determine their pre-season programme.

“We have targets by position set for the players so we expect them to hit those – otherwise they’re in trouble,” Tobin said with a smile.

“It’s very individualised. Some players are strong, powerful and quick, some aren’t big enough and need to put on muscle mass so it’s all those little things that you get from the assessments that we will tweak in those programmes over the next few weeks or so.”

The sooner the players hit their targets, the sooner they’ll get the ball in their hand in training.

“Anyone who hits their targets early, will get conditioned and get into it from there,” said Tobin.

“Anyone who doesn’t hit the targets will have to be removed from the programme for a while to get them running fit so if they can safely transition and handle the intensity of the rugby conditioning when they drop in so that depends how far off target they are.

“If they’re 10 seconds off where we need them to be it might be a week of training, if they’re 30 seconds off it could be the whole pre-season before they transition into really high conditioning with the rugby ball.”